{"id":30696,"date":"2023-02-01T20:24:45","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T04:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=30696"},"modified":"2023-02-01T20:24:45","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T04:24:45","slug":"two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Steps Forward and One Step Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jeffrey Sachs in <em>The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions<\/em> provides a historical account of the seven ages of globalization. While he provides a macro-mapping of the ages and their impacts on society, he spends the majority of the book doing a deep dive into each age, the historical context and significance of each, and how they contributed towards the shaping of the next. In his words, the premise of the book is \u201cabout the complexities of globalization, including the powerful capacity of globalization to improve the human condition while bringing undoubted threats as well.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> Beginning with the Paleolithic Age which he dates beginning at 70,000 BCE through todays Digital Age, Sachs asks the reader to continually consider five questions as he walks through each age:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>What have been the main drivers of global-scale change?<\/li>\n<li>How do geography, technology, and institutions interact?<\/li>\n<li>How do changes in one region diffuse to others?<\/li>\n<li>How have these changes affected global interdependence?<\/li>\n<li>What lessons can we glean from each age to help us meet our challenges today?<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>He argues that there is much to lose should we allow history to repeat itself in the way of societal disruptions and poses that the three greatest issues we face today are sustainable development, multilateral governance, and universal values.<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> Sachs being a faculty at Columbia University and the director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network advocates that an effective avenue to address these is through the seventeen US Sustainable Development Goals.<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> He concludes his thoughts by reminding the reader of the commonalities in the human journey and an encouragement that through our distinct cultures, a global society is strengthened.<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>While reading, there were several components that I connected with our previous readings in his program:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The need for adaptive leadership as discussed with Northouse.<\/li>\n<li>The fact that despite how things may feel, society is getting better as discussed with Rosling.<\/li>\n<li>The importance of taking context into account when analyzing numbers as discussed with Chivers.<\/li>\n<li>The universal components of the human journey as discussed with Campbell.<\/li>\n<li>The implications that a good map has for progress of a society as discussed with Winchester.<\/li>\n<li>The necessity of facing harms caused in order to move forward as discussed with Tutu.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While not written from a biblical perspective, I think it would benefit the Christian leader of today to reflect on the five questions posed at the beginning of the book through a scriptural lens. I propose they would be framed something along the lines of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How does the church contribute towards global-scale change today?<\/li>\n<li>How does the church steward geography, technology, and institutions well?<\/li>\n<li>How does the church diffuse into their local or global community, especially considering increased access to virtual components during the pandemic?<\/li>\n<li>How has the church engaged with or led components of global interdependence?<\/li>\n<li>What lessons can we glean from how the church functioned in each age that have significance towards how we are postured towards the challenges faced today?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think additionally, this book causes me to consider how the value and action of reflection can mitigate challenges and risk that would otherwise present themselves. While more historical than I tend to lean towards, Sachs does provide a wonderful reminder that history can revel the harms caused, the developments made, and the necessity to look at both deeply and critically as we step forward.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Sachs, viiii.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Ibid., 2.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Ibid., 31.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Ibid., 198.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Ibid., 214.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeffrey Sachs in The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions provides a historical account of the seven ages of globalization. While he provides a macro-mapping of the ages and their impacts on society, he spends the majority of the book doing a deep dive into each age, the historical context and significance of each, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[573,2004,2568],"class_list":["post-30696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-globalization","tag-lgp11","tag-sachs","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30697,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30696\/revisions\/30697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}